Thanks to
Betty Cornell’s Teenage Popularity Guide, published in 1953, she survived the
middle-school blues. And she was inspired by the experience of following the guide to write
Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek.

Her father found the Cornell book in a thrift shop long before she was born, said Van Wagenen,
15 — and its outdated gems made him smile.

To wit: “Beautiful hair is about the most important thing a girl has.”

When the guide surfaced during a cleanup effort, Van Wagenen’s parents challenged the
eighth-grader to follow the book’s advice in secret and write about what happens.

But Van Wagenen — who considered herself to be “one step above substitute teachers” on her
school’s popularity scale — worried that the project would only make things worse.

“It didn’t seem like a good idea at all,” she said. “I was terrified because, flipping through
the pages, you read about all teens must wear a girdle and wear pearls to school and wear pantyhose
and red lipstick and stuff that I definitely wasn’t comfortable doing.”

As she read the book, though, she had an epiphany.

“I realized I did want friends and I did want to be liked and I did want to be accepted,” she
recalled. “And, while I didn’t have a clear-cut definition of popularity, I knew that it wasn’t
what I was.

“More than anything, I didn’t have anything to lose, so I said: ‘You know what? I’ll try it for
a month.’ ”

Van Wagenen, then a 13-year-old living in Brownsville, Texas, began to make changes. She wore
pearls, dressed up and even tried a girdle.

Little things suggested by Cornell began to make sense.

Van Wagenen — who said she used to spend five minutes on her hair — began to put time into her
appearance. A classmate even commented that she had “finally dropped the stupid ponytail.”

“There were times people would say mean things and it would make me feel really bad,” Van
Wagenen confessed, but writing about them turned them into “hilarious stories.”

“These bullies became characters, and I became a character as well — and that was really
empowering,” she said.

Cornell’s guide also encouraged her to be more outgoing.

As she made connections, other teenagers began to gravitate to her. That helped her realize, she
recalled, that “Everyone around you is like you, and they’re looking for friendship, and so it’s
good to step up and to be that person, that kind person.”

Amid the experiment, Van Wagenen’s father tracked down Betty Cornell, 79 and living in Audubon,
Pa. Van Wagenen and Cornell met, and the young author discovered that Cornell still follows the
principles of her book.

“It was wonderful to share that connection,” Van Wagenen said.

Van Wagenen’s recently published memoir — geared to age 12 and older — includes a foreword
written by Cornell.
Teenage Popularity Guide was reissued as a companion book.

DreamWorks has purchased the rights to develop her story into a movie.

Van Wagenen, in 10th grade and living in Statesboro, Ga., still breaks out the pearls on special
occasions, but she refuses to wear one thing.